This year Jaguar UK teamed up with RCA to create a design challenge for students of both the RCA’s automobile and textiles courses. Of the 9 group entries, the winning design on show in the Farmiloe building alongside the new F-TYPE comes from RCA students, Ewan Gallimore and Claire Miller. There’s some making imagery over at Carscoops. See more pictures of their sculpture at Clerkenwell on the next page!

While over at New York Design Week they have the Progetto Barrique (with the swing we loved here) with designers repurposing reclaimed casks… here in London, there’s a similar project upcycling beer barrels! This is one of my favorite projects from May Design Series, “The end of the Big Beer Barrel” from Switzerland-based Yask. The project’s premise is the retirement on 50 litre (11 gallon) stainless steel beer barrels in favor of a new smaller model. The iconic larger sized beer barrels will suddenly be retired from use and candidates for recycling or upcycling. The studio explored how these barrels might be used in variety of contexts. Take a peek on the next page!

Mercedes-Benz Ener-G Force Concept Car - it’s like the cartoon super hero car that someone between the Fisher Price Rescue Heroes/Team Fortress/Duke Nukem would drive… with an Xterra-esque rear, an FJ like feel, and the illustrations remind me of Kimberly Wu’s JOY concept from 2008. While I was intrigued by the concept images that have been floating around when it surfaced on NOTCOT.org, i didn’t expect to love it as much as i did in person! The sketches are stunning. The attention to details - fascinating! And in person, in the glow of sunset, it really is hard to take your eyes off of. I love that they created the concept and sketches situations of it for Desert, Polar, and Jungle situations using camel, penguin, and monkey icons - even on the tires, which sadly didn’t make it into the final model. However, they did slip in the side view mirror warning: “Penguins, camels, and other wild animals in mirror may be closer than they appear.” Mercedes, please make this into a toy car model - or an R/C car - or a 3D printable R/C car shell… because it is adorable, and would make for some ridiculously fun photoshoots with action figures.

Take a look at the sketches, details, teaser video (the video is pretty epic) - then the unveiling of the full sized model at Mister C in Beverly Hills tonight. There are a LOT of pictures, but there was too much fun not to share! See it all on the next page…

Daniel Robson, who presented with Collective at New Designers 2012 Part 2. Robson’s ‘Seed Wheel’ is based on a subscription service that takes all the guesswork out of gardening. Specifically tailored to the customer’s location and season, each seed wheel is a customized, modular package of seeds with a minimum of non-recyclable waste. The seed wheel has perforated lines to allow for multiple planting. When ready to plant, the pod itself can be used as a dibber to push the seeds in, even eliminating the need for gardening tools! More photos of this clever project on the next page!

William Banfield’s Micro-Make, a clever series of kits for schools, designed to engage young people in the way every day goods are produced. The first two of the series are the Micro-Make Vac Former and Rotational Moulder, which are compact, easily transportable kits that let children use vacuums to create their own molds and a rotational molder to create hollow forms! I got a brief demo of the kits in action and the kids who get to manufacture their own pieces are in for a treat! Take a look at more pictures on the next page!

I fell in love with these LED Glühbirne Nature Bulbs at Dwell On Design today. Designed by Process, they were spotted in silver painted wood crates over at the Design Prize Switzerland booth. “The LED NATURE BULB combines the most up-to-date energy-efficient lighting technology with the form of the classic bulb. The ventilation opening in the centre of the luminous body carries a worldwide patent, and lends the product an independent and iconic character. Its 360 degree dispensation of light has also been patented and guarantees ideal functionality. The balanced form of the lighting unit means that it can also be used without a lampshade and will fit harmoniously into any kind of interior. Other advantages are the extremely long life of the bulb, its efficient use of electricity (just 4.5W) and the non-toxicity of the materials.” They are stunning in person! See more pictures as well as a pic of what’s inside it on the next page!

The latest from London-based editor, Justine Aw as she checks out the press preview of Show RCA 2012. The show opens to the public on the 20th of June and closes on the 1st of July.

Love this project from Raphael Kim, a fellow former biologist, Kim’s project is not only a beautiful piece to look at, but also biologically fascinating! His Rotifer Farm is all about interactions between microbial communities and people. As Kim points out, we have few conscious interactions with this incredible diversity of creatures (the only time we even notice them is usually when you come down with a stomach bug!).

Rotifer Farm is a home designed to explore interactions between humans and this microscopic world of rotifers. Rotifers are a group of considerable scientific interest on account of their incredible hardiness as well as fascinating locomotion (via coronal cilia), parthenogenetic reproduction. However, they’re not a group we consciously interact with much outside of the lab. Kim’s Rotifer Farm takes the microbial communities outside of the lab creating an intermediate space between the world of research labs and our everyday lives, creating a more tangible experience.

The farm is organized in a number of different circuits with different developmental stages (including those pretty pink eggs) and comes with pipettes for moving your little rotifer friends from one section to the next. Raphael even went to spend a few months with a rotifer specialist in Okinawa, where he obtained some of these incredible images and videos of rotifers feeding and glowing.

The latest from London-based editor, Justine Aw as she checks out the press preview of Show RCA 2012. The show opens to the public on the 20th of June and closes on the 1st of July.

Aleksandra Mirecka’s LAVA lemonade. For the show, Mirecka has turned a corner of the new Battersea campus’ into a fun little café where you can sip on homemade lemonade from handmade glasses with adorable straws! It’s a fun little space that’s playful and a pretty take on the childhood lemonade stand. Oh and did we mention the lemonade is delicious? More photos on the next page!

The latest from London-based editor, Justine Aw as she checks out the press preview of Show RCA 2012. The show opens to the public on the 20th of June and closes on the 1st of July.

As a natural history enthusiast who spends her spare time surrounded by skeletons, I was intrigued when I recognized cervid mandibles at the jewellery section of the Show RCA 2012. These incredible sunglasses are the work of Emma Montague of the Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork & Jewellery department. Emma was inspired by the relationship between the shape of the jaw bone and sunglasses when she put her Ray Bans down beside a mandible (as you do!). The result are a beautiful series of sunglasses made from black horn, the jaw bones of deer and acetate. They are the byproduct of trophies and in the collection, Emma marries luxury and decay and the raw with the refined. As for the mandibles? They come from the deer culled by The British Deer Society. More photos of the series on the next page!

Jon C Flint’s Bank of Morals (Moral Wealth vessel number: bk001) caught my eye with its beautiful glass containers filled with different colored fluids and all focused on a single succulent. In addition to being visually stunning, the piece illustrates proverbial banking solutions. Jon’s moral wealth vessel is designed for the money or jade plant, whose growth is a reflection of your morals. The three vessels feed the plant different types of water depending on your spending and an imbalance between them will cause your money plant to suffer (too much spending on luxuuries and yourself, water containing toxins will flow into the vessel, but spending on hope and charity cause mineral rich water to flow into the vessel.) See lots of pictures on the next page!

Darragh Casey’s series Shelving the Body. Darragh’s dad used to put up a shelf every time was bored and this inspired the furniture design student to explore the relationship between people, shelves and the objects they are designed to hold. Rather than creating generalist shelves that support all nature of goods, he began experimenting and creating shelves which rely on people to use their own bodies and weigh to support or counterbalance objects or require users to carefully configure their objects on the shelves. Some shelves require the user to take a certain position and in his shelving the body project, shelves are designed to support human bodies themselves! I love the ‘shelf portrait’s that result and the excellent participation of Darragh’s family across the generations! See more pictures on the next page!

The Central Saint Martins 2012 Degree Shows were a great excuse to wander down to the beautiful new home of Central Saint Martins on the bank of Regents Canal near Kings Cross. The new buildings are stunning and home to a huge variety of incredible student work. The showcase continues until Thursday, June 21st and are free to the public. This post is a first look at the variety of projects ~ more features to come soon on some favorites! See photos of some of the incredible student projects on the next page!

I was lusting after the Lamborghini Aventador J one of a kind that just launched in Geneva… which naturally lead me to the Lamborghini site… where i encountered the image above. And i literally LOLed. So awesome. That gate. Wow. And apparently Lamborghini is really in to twitter and hashtags?

Anyhow, back to the other topic at hand… the new Lamborghini Aventador J concept is gorgeous! Often the Lamborghini designs are so faceted and aggressively angular, i love the way this model gets a bit softer and sleeker with its curves mixed in… also the wheels are gorgeous (“The wheels, of course, were also developed specifically for this car, with 20-inch rims at the front and 21-inch at the rear. The five-spoke aluminum wheels have a central lock system and an additional carbon fiber insert that functions like a small fan for optimum brake ventilation.”)… and it is the first automotive use of “Carbonskin” (which “is made of woven carbon fibers soaked with a very special epoxy resin that stabilizes the fiber structure and keeps the material soft.”)… oh, and the exhaust… and the periscopic rearview mirror that floats in the center! And as for what’s inside this stunning design, the basis is the Aventador LP 700-4 new twelve-cylinder model. Lots of pics on the next page of course!

p.s.
You can buy this. It’s a one of a kind… see how they end the press release: “A unique work of art licensed for the road However, at the end of the Geneva Motor Show, this sight will be the preserve of just one - the future owner of the Lamborghini Aventador J. There is only one of them, no prototypes and no others for the Lamborghini Museum. The buyer can look forward to a truly unique, street-legal work of art. He will possess the most extreme expression of Lamborghini DNA in existence and a real masterpiece of high technology.”

Our London-based editor Justine Aw shares another find from the London Design Festival!

Foldboat (the design duo Max Frommeld and Arno Mathies) featured a
special Dock edition boat at Tom Dixon’s ‘Multiplex at The Dock’ during the London Design Festival. As the name suggests, the boat is literally folded from a flat 2.5m x 1.5m plastic sheet and can be transformed from flat sheet to row boat by a single person in 2 minutes using only 3 components. Amazingly fun to see it action ~ see more pictures of it at the Dock as well as close ups on the next page!

One of the most fascinating spectacles yesterday was watching how they unload and maneuver/roll precious, concept cars into the putting green in front of the Lodge at Pebble Beach. Especially fun to watch? The unload of the 2009 Mercedes-Benz F-Cell Roadster Concept… a hydrogen electric fuel-cell powered, joystick controlled, bicycle wheeled buggy. While the press pics have been floating for 2+ years, there was something intriguing about seeing it being semi-driven/rolled around and seeing the responses on people (especially kids) faces as they watched in wonder, perhaps even imagining a reality where that could be what we drive. The wood panels on grass technique was fun to watch, take a peek at the process and details on the next page.

Robert Ware’s piece explores techniques where information is translated from digital to physical. The first experiment is constructed from the recycled parts out of old inkjet printers connected up to an arduino board, which creates beautiful drawings from data (far more beautiful than printed spreadsheets!). He has also used RepRap, an open source 3D printer and hardware constructed from components available in any DIY store, Rob has 3D printed St Paul’s cathedral. But the project is about much more. See some of the many aspects of the project and more info on the next page!

Another find from Justine! - More fun from the architecture department at Show RCA 2011! My favorite, most unexpected piece was this gorgeous chair! The chair is a sample of one of the types of products that could be made in the Hackney Factory, beautifully capturing the process of recycling and reuse, i.e. junk being transformed into bespoke products through craft and digital processes. Love it! So pretty… also you have to take a peek at Hackney Factory project, which consists of a close loop of recycling micro-factories and market forum, essentially creating a micro-community model based on urban mining. Stunning stuff ~ check it all out on the next page!

More discoveries from Justine! This is a beautiful piece by jewellery designer, Yenz Lin, spotted at the 2011 degree shows at Central Saint Martins College. The Crown-Bird is a headpiece made from SLS in Nylon Powder… and while from most angles it’s not easy to tell what it is exactly… at the perfect angle adorable shadows of birds are created. As the title hints ~ it’s all about your perception! See the full series on the next page!

One highlight for me was the work of Jack Smith! My favorite of his pieces was the Birdbox, a flat packable birdhouse composed of two flat plywood pieces that assembles easily to form a cozy birdhouse. So beautiful in its simplicity, you simply must check out its pieces and how it comes together! See it all on the next page!

Justine was sharing this incredibly intriguing project she found happening in the UK… supposedly its like Farmville, but in real life… while still online… anyhow, take a peek below at what she has to share about it!

Last month, the National Trust launched the MyFarm project, which creates and bridges digital communities with the daily realities of farming. Although the project was heralded by the BBC and others as “FarmVille meets reality”, those behind the project are clear to stress that this is not a game. Instead, the community of 10,000 online Farmers have a direct impact on the workings of the farm at National Trust’s Wimpole Estate and are effectively working with farm manager Richard Morris to decide how it should be run. The first MyFarm vote took place last month, with internet farmers voting to grow wheat and that decision is already being implemented!

The project is a fascinating mix of real and virtual worlds and demonstrates a great use of digital and social media to raise awareness about the National Trust and British farmers. It also provides unrivaled access to a working farm. No matter where you are, you can follow the estate on twitter (@WimpoleEstateNT) as well as farm manager, Richard Morris (@farmermorris) as he goes on his rounds to check on the farm and reports on the many new arrivals (the last few days have seen many new piglets and calves!). They team have also just set up a dedicated MyFarm twitter account (@MYFarmNT) and an account for Emma who looks after the Shire horses (@EmmaMyFarm). The Shires are one to watch at the moment, with a new streaming cam for MyFarmers to be able to watch the pregnant Queenie and hopefully witness the birth of a Shire foal live in the next week or so!

In addition to being a fascinating project, the Wimpole Estate is an incredible place to visit. Located just outside Cambridge, it is one of my favorite escapes, with a beautiful stately home and gardens as well as the farm. It is also home to many of my favorite rare breeds. The home farm is a Rare Breeds Survival Trust approved farm park, home to a number of rare breed livestock including horses, sheep, goats, pigs and poultry. The estate also runs a great events/courses series. I recently learned to hand shear some rare breed sheep and may be back soon to try my hand at hedgelaying, blacksmithing or ferretting. The next MyFarm vote is coming up soon and is about a subject near and dear to me, SHEEP! So let’s get voting to save native breeds!

The project is all about taking advantage of a shared community resource, fruit! There is a growing map and network of all the fruit trees in public spaces in London created by the FruitCity team. Who knew you could pick your own mulberries, figs, apples, pears and more!

In addition the map, the project includes three objects for urban fruit farmers: an extendable picking arm, a picking backpack and mobile cider press and a fantastic photos series to show them off.

Such a great community project! Angelenos should check out Fallen Fruit for LA fruit maps.

Just in from the UK ~ Justine just checked out Clerkenwell Design Week!

One of the highlights of Clerkenwell Design Week is Jaguar’s C-X75 concept car. Jaguar will produce 250 of the striking hybrid supercars in association with Williams F1. As for design inspiration - “The C-X75’s designers found inspiration in the innovative engineering and functional design elements of cars like the 1950s C-Type and D-Type racers and unique 1966 XJ13 Le Mans prototype.” Additionally it’s leather is sourced from the Scottish Bridge of Weir, one of the most environmentally efficient leather producers in the world… and up to 50% of the C-X75’s structure is made of recycled aluminium! Stunning, right? Especially in contrast to the old industrial, woody setting of the Farmiloe Building that was once home of Victorian lead and glass merchants! Despite how much the display tries pull you in to photograph it, it’s pretty irresistible. But enough talk, more photos after the jump!

Been exploring NY Design Week digitally this year, and Anna of Sub-Studio, has been our eyes and ears! She just sent over these pics of The Reflective Work showing at The Future Perfect! Gorgeously simple idea, and so beautiful! Made by Lara Knutson, the shade is made out of a reflective glass fabric that is made from microscopic glass beads which magnify light 100 times. The fixture is lit with an LED that looks like a traditional lightbulb when reflected in the lampshade. There was also a bunch of vases and jewelry that was made from the same reflective fabric. See close ups on the next page!

On fun surprises that arrived ~ little package came from Duncan Shotton a designer at Kinneir Dufort… inside the adorable little stamped box? Denzel! A prototype of the ambassador they designed for their Revive Concept Phone - that gets better with age. Take a peek at Denzel’s unboxing, a video of the concept in action, and more on the next page!

The process and creative imagery that is produced along the path to great products are often quite a work of art… It’s so inspiring to see Mercedes-Benz embracing the process by formalizing sculptures in their process of exploration and discovery. There’s something almost magical when seeing the design process itself shared through these sculptural experiments, especially when they share the sketches and organic inspiration that leads them there. Works of art being displayed along side concept cars and current cars fill you with curiosity and open ended inspiration of what the future may hold. Mercedes Aesthetics No. 2 just debuted at Detroit Auto Show.

I love this quote from Mercedes Head of Design, Gorden Wagener, “Inspiration is the pre-condition for the calm, coherent yet passionately emotional design of our cars. In the interior sculpture Aesthetics No. 2 we have allowed creative fantasy to develop freely without constraints.” Regarding sculpture details, “On a scale of 1.5 to 1 the sculpture measures 18.3 x 6 x 8.5 feet. The finely wrought frame painted in alubeam Liquid Metal is light and strong; the white seating landscapes look like ivory.” Take a look at the inspiration behind and the design process that went into it… as well as the very cool final sculpture!